The present invention relates to a technique for coupling computational resources such as documents or application components available in work space in the case of working in certain work space, and to a distributed system architecture for supporting an automatic setup as the optimum environment to do cooperative work in the work space using various computational resources in, for example, a situation in which plural workers advance cooperative work by moving various work space inside an office.
Various distributed system architectures designed assuming that various kinds of devices present in real work space or software components offered by the devices are dynamically combined to perform cooperative operation are conventionally as disclosed in “Sun Microsystems, Inc.: JINI Technology Architectural Overview, 1999”, “Understanding Universal Plug and Play: A White Paper, June 2000” and “Sony, Matsushita, Philips, Thomson, Hitachi, Toshiba, Sharp, and Grundig: Specification of the Home Audio/Video Interoperability (HAVi) Architecture, May 1998”.
However, in these platform frameworks, a platform for dynamical connection of the devices or the software components is offered, but a function of dynamically coupling in response to positions of a device or a user moving on a variety of actual work space is not offered.
On the other hand, a technique for configuring a function dynamically in response to positions of a device or an user is also proposed as disclosed in JP-A-2001-136504. In this method, seamless document interchange between different devices is enabled by being able to detect positions of various devices present on physical space through marker recognition and interchange addresses or IDs given to electronic objects displayed in the respective devices or physical objects of the real world through direct operation.
However, in this method, only address or ID information is interchanged and functional coordination of software etc. cannot be performed.
Also, a method for abstracting devices or software parts unevenly distributed in the real world in a unit called a body component and dynamically integrating the body components on an execution entity calling them a soul component in response to their positions is proposed as disclosed in“Mochizuki, Tokuda, Pozeshonuea: Application Configuration Tool Kit by Makeshift Technique, Computer Software, Vol.17, No.6, 2000”.
However, in this method, in a manner similar to a coordination framework of non-patent reference 1 etc., inquiry is made of centralized directory service for offering positions or presence of service and service is retrieved to link, so that it is probably difficult to implement coordination in open environment over a network.
Also, an application framework for ad hoc making connection between applications on plural devices through asynchronous message interchange by buffering and offering decentralized and fault tolerant cooperative work space is proposed as disclosed in “D. Buszko, W. Lee, A. Halal, Decentralized Ad-Hoc Groupware API and Framework for Mobile Collaboration, ACM GROUP' 01, Sep. 30-Oct. 3, 2001”.
However, in the method proposed herein, position information about various devices is not used and coordination between the devices is performed by ad hoc connection in mobile environment and an end user must perform the connection operation itself.
In environment in which plural workers (users) conduct business while moving various places such as a living room or a meeting room inside an office, in order that the plural workers gather in the same work space and efficiently do cooperative work such as presentation, discussion and examination of design drawing, environment of cooperative work in which use is limited to a certain user is not prepared and flexibility constructed so that documents owned by the respective workers are mutually offered and shared as necessary or coordination between portable computers brought by the worker or coordination between a device placed in the work space and a device brought by the user can be performed to operate is required.
Further, instead of limiting use to users registered previously or enabling coordination only between devices or contents of kinds predetermined, coordination objects are not limited and openness in which all coordinations are enabled without imposing special limitations is also required in the case of users participating in a situation in which cooperative work is done on real space or devices connected to a network and used in work.
Furthermore, instead of a method in which one server performs centralized control, decentralization of control for operating various devices mutually connected equally with high reliability and high efficiency as a whole is required.